Winter Colour Diet - Sessions 2 & 3

Yay!  I got to torch twice last weekend, so I got an extra session in.  I'm going to talk about both session #2 and session #3 at the same time, since I don't have all that much really to show.

The overall tone of these last few sessions has been a little dismal because I keep making beads like this one and then have them split into multiple pieces.  This one held it together for almost a whole day before it self-destructed.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of spending eight hours melting glass only to discover that almost everything you did is only fit for the garbage.  However, I've soldiered on and am, in spite of these issues, really enjoying the palette.  Just so that it's clear, I don't think that any of the colours I'm using in the palette are causing these issues all by themselves.  I am almost certain that it's my clear that is the problem.  I've been trying not to talk about it much before I have all of the information, but I'll post with the whole story once I know the whole story.

Since I'm only making beads once a week, almost everything I will show here I am also showing in some other post in a different context.  These posts about my colour diet will contain information about which glass is in which bead and the general process used for building each of them, whereas in other posts they show up just as examples of when I've used a particular glass colour.

This one is CiM Mink, rolled in silver leaf.  I melted the leaf in and then thinly encased it.  There is SiS on the ends, and the raked leaf decoration is SiS overdotted with Taxco Silver Turquoise, raked and reduced.  The reaction between the Mink and the silver leaf is incredible.

This one is Mink, rolled in Striking Color frit.  I pressed it in my lentil press, but I had a little too much glass on the mandrel.  I cut up the side that overflowed the press and applied a silvered Dark Ivory shard to the other side.  I seem to be putting SiS on the ends of all of my beads lately, and this one is no exception.  A couple of the 'wings' formed by the cutting have been swirled and over-dotted with Light Brown Transparent. It's such a little mutant bead.

This one is Okey Dokey Artichoky with Striking Color frit, SiS and a silvered Dark Ivory shard.  I ran out of SiS, so I did the ends in regular Ivory, instead.  Note to self:  Pull lots of SiS at the beginning of each session.

I posted about this bead in my test results for Seashell Swirl.  The reactions in this little guy were a fun discovery.  It's a thin core cylinder of Seashell Swirl, rolled in silver leaf and then Striking Color frit.  The bead was reduced, and then thinly encased.  I then put a blob of Aion along one side and creased it with a steel paddle before reducing and encasing it again.  The ends are done with SiS (of course, what else?) and on the front there is a swirl over-dotted with Pale Emerald and some Copper Green dots.  I'm not very happy with the swirl, since its sole purpose is to conceal a really awful attempt at applying murrini.  I need more practice with that.

Neither the pattern nor the shape of this bead really came out the way I wanted, but it's my own fault... I keep saying I'm not going to make any more beads this long but this sucker measured in at 95mm.  Hopefully I'll be able to restrain myself from doing this again tomorrow.

It's built on a core of Reichenbach Mystic Beige.  On top of the Mystic Beige, I used Striking Color frit and some random trails of Copper Green.  I made the bead long by super-heating the glass and letting it slide down the mandrel, allowing gravity to stretch and swirl the frit and trails of other colours.  The ends are Mystic Beige, and there is scribbled SiS decoration on both the ends and in the middle.   The purply pink bit is a wrap of Red Copper Green, which is a pretty neat colour!  I haven't really done much with that one yet but I guess I'll need to take a closer look at it.

This one is the treasure of the last few sessions.  It is Seashell Swirl, rolled in silver leaf and Striking Color frit.  The end caps are Tamarind Unique, and there is SiS decoration at the ends and in the middle.  I swirled it almost violently, and then reduced it to make the silver pop.  I think I wish I'd added some ivory dots to break up the brownness of it.

Going into Session #4, here's where I was with the palette:

• EFF Red Copper Green
• CiM Adamantium
• CiM Mink  CiM Mermaid
• CiM Tamarind Unique (-1)
• REI Mystic Beige
• EFF Okey Dokey Artichoky
• EFF Copper Green
• EFF Dark Violet
• VET Seashell Swirl
• EFF Light Brown (Transparent)
• EFF Pale Green Apple (Transparent)
• EFF Pale Emerald (Transparent)
• EFF Pale Aqua (Transparent)
• EFF Pale Ink Blue (Transparent)
• Staples:  Clear, Black, Dark Ivory, Ivory
• Silver Glass:  Assorted Silver Glass Colours, rods & frit
• Metals:  Silver Mesh, Silver Wire, Copper Mesh, Silver Leaf, Silver Foil
• Dichro:  Dichro on Clear (various colours)
• Goldstone:  Gold Aventurine Chunks

The only change is that I used up my initial bundle of CiM Mink and am retiring it so that I can play with CiM Mermaid.  I still have some Mink, and I think that once I'm out of Mermaid I'll go back to it, but I want to give this other new CiM colour a spin.

I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of Striking Color frit.  I think I only have enough for my next few sessions at the torch.  I'm really enjoying using it!  If you have a chance to get your hands on some, grab it for sure.

Test Results :: Seashell Swirl

1 - Plain, 2 - Plain Reduced, 3 - Silver Leaf, 4 - Silver Leaf Reduced & Encased, 5 - Encased, 6 - Floral, 7 - Reduced w/ Silver Glass, 8 - w/ Black, 9 - w/ Ivory, 10 - w/ Copper Green

Vetrofond Seashell Swirl.  People reading this are going to think that I am just a colour junkie and never have anything but nice things to say about all of the glass.  To set the record straight, there are plenty of colours I don't like.  I just don't happen to be testing any of those ones presently :)

Back to Seashell Swirl.  The rods are a slightly pearly mauvey-pink colour with some light tendrils running through them.  They are pretty rods.  Almost (but not quite) too pretty to melt.  If you like pink and you like reactive glass that does fun things, you will probably like Seashell Swirl.  I like it, and I'm not even a particular fan of pink.  It's just slightly on the purply side of pink, and is super-reactive.

Seashell Swirl is an odd lot, but it's a little easier to find than some of the other, rarer ones.  For now at least... I guess eventually it will be all gone.  *sigh*

Colour Density
Seashell Swirl is an almost-opaque, streaky colour.  It sort of defies classification because semi-opaque doesn't quite fit, but it certainly is not entirely opaque either.  Used for flower petals, it is slightly translucent and a little ragged.  (Bead #6)

Under Clear
Like most of the other colours I've tested, Seashell Swirl is a little lighter under Clear than it is alone.  I'm going to stop running this test if I keep getting the same result every time. (Bead #5)

Reduction
Seashell Swirl, when reduced alone, yellows slightly.  (Bead #2)

Reactions
There's a lot to talk about here, because Seashell Swirl does lots of fun things.

When paired with silver, Seashell Swirl darkens, and turns the silver brown.  The shade of brown that the silver turns to reminds me very much of the way unstruck striking silver glass looks.  (Bead #3)

Then, if you reduce and encase it, the Seashell Swirl takes on a little iridescence.  (Bead #4)

I took this even further, using Striking Color frit on top of the silver leaf.  When I encased that I got an iridescence so shiny it's almost reflective:

And when paired just with silver glass (I know, it shouldn't be too much to ask that I remember which one [but it somehow is]) the Seashell Swirl gets a smoky gleam to it that is very appealing.  (Bead #7)

Whew!  So... now... even if I wanted to find a way to not like Seashell Swirl, I would be incapable of it.  This glass is SO FUN with silver!

Seashell Swirl seems to try to assimilate Ivory.  (Bead #9) Do you see the way the ivory is changing colour around the pink so that the dots almost seem blurry?  I promise it's not the photography that's blurry.

Seashell Swirl has some strange influence over Copper Green.  It seems to leech the colour out of it to pool near where the pink is, and where there are lines or dots of Seashell Swirl on the Copper Green they almost look like they are floating on the surface rather than sitting firmly on top of it. (Bead #10)

General Impressions
Seashell Swirl is a reactive, FUN colour that behaves beautifully with silver glass as well as both colours from the sulphur family (Ivory) and copper family (Copper Green).  This makes it a fun-to-think-about design element since you can use it to space out colours you wouldn't normally use together because they might turn each other dark and mucky.  It mostly keeps together and stays put, hardly spreading at all.

Predictably, I like it a lot! :)

Here are some other beads made with Seashell Swirl:

Test Results :: Mink

1 - Plain, 2 - Encased, 3 - w/ Khaos Frit, 4 - w/ Elektra2/Gaia/Kronos2, reduced, 5 - w/ Silver Leaf, 6 - w/ Copper Green, 7 - w/ Black, 8 - w/ Ivory, 9 - As a Floral (Copper Green core), 10 - Reduced & encased.

This is my initial run of test beads for CiM Mink.  You can see that beads #9 and #10 had some issues and split themselves in half somewhere during the annealing process, and Bead #2 has the same problem, although it is still holding itself together by a thread.  The issues I've been having lately are bigger than just the split beads you see above and I'm still trying to get to the bottom of them.  The current theory is that I have a bad batch of Clear, but the jury is still out.  In any case, I think in these beads that the main problem was  my annealing temperature.

While taking the mandrel out of Bead #1, a large piece of the bead snapped off, and it felt brittle.  The kiln at the studio was annealing at 930, but I found out after that Mink needs to be annealed between 990 and 1100F which explains the issues I was having with it.  I am now annealing my beads at 980F, which is the highest I could get the studio to turn it up.  I think it's helped, because the beads I made with Mink yesterday look sturdier and not inclined to crack, even when encased.

I was going to repeat all of my testing, but I feel the test results for colour are valid in spite of the few issues I had, so I am going to share those, as well as some pictures of other beads I have made with Mink.

Colour Density
While Mink is slightly translucent, it is substantial enough that you can make flower petals out of it and still be able to see them.  (Bead #9) It's also opaque enough that you can barely see the mandrel through it. (Bead #1)

Under Clear
Encasing Mink brightens it a little. (Bead #2)

Reduction
Reducing Mink doesn't seem to change it much at all, except maybe to bleach a little of the colour out of it. (Beads #4, 10)

Reactions
Out of the beads above, there are a couple of reactions that are really eye-catching and intriguing.  First is the way silver and silver glass play with Mink.

Silver Leaf turns blue and green on Mink (Bead #5).  Silver Leaf turns blue and green on Mink!  Cool.  I love this reaction a lot.  As it turns out, you can even encase this reaction for neat effect:

In Beads #3 & #4, you can see that silver glass and Mink have an interesting relationship.  The edges of the reduction frit I put on Bead #4 have a curdled, light brown outline.

The Khaos frit on Bead #5 struck in a way that Khaos frit has never done for me before.

I've already shared a picture of this tube bead, but I'm still amazed by the reaction.  TerraNova2 just bled all over it:

Those are some pretty cool effects, so using Mink as a base for silver and silver glasses makes a lot of sense to me.  And since it seems that the issues with brittleness and with encasing it go away if you just anneal it at the right temperature, I think it might be fun to play with Mink and silver glass some more.

The other reaction worth mentioning is what Mink did to Copper Green in Bead #6.  Check out the weird, muddy webbing:

It also made the Copper Green separate into dark and light, and I like it when Copper Green does that.

General Impressions
I am a little wary of Mink after my tricky annealing temperature experience last week, but for the way it plays with silver, alone, Mink is definitely worth the trouble.  More experimentation required, but Mink, I think I love you :)

Here's a little more Mink eye candy:

Updates
I repeated my testing for encasing Mink by attempting to encase another really large lentil focal really thickly, and the bead cracked.  Since I otherwise now have my cracking problem mostly under control, I am forced to conclude that while Mink will accept some casing, it's not a good idea to encase it really thickly -- at least not in a really big bead.

Here are some other interesting things other people have discovered about Mink (I love the interwebz!)
- Mink with White and Mink with Ivory (Dwyn Tomlinson)